More than 25 information and operations management undergraduates spent two days learning about corporate expectations, leadership attributes and team building during the Center for Management of Information Systems (CMIS)’ annual leadership retreat in late August.

The retreat is designed to help students establish friendships, create new team partners for class projects and glean a heightened sense of what defines true leaders. They met with CMIS board members, corporate representatives and former A&M student leaders in a casual setting around campfires and during a chuck wagon dinner in Navasota, Texas.

Recruiters from 143 national and international companies gathered in Wehner in September to recruit future employees and interns during the fall Business Career Fair. Representatives from companies in every industry from oil and gas to financial services to retail took the opportunity to meet Mays students serious about their fields.

Many students, including senior finance major Stacey Stewart, use the Business Student Council’s biannual Career Fair as a springboard to interviews. Stewart came to fairs in semesters past looking for internships, but this is her first time as a full-time hire.

“I am looking at energy trading with a company like BP or possibly an investment-banking firm position,” Stewart said. “I hope to make contacts with and know a little bit about representatives so that I am more comfortable when I speak with them again.”

JCPenney representative Trina Kilpatrick said that in the three days she attended the career fair, she had met students who were more focused in their questions concerning her company and the jobs available than students have been in previous years.

“I have seen a lot of students who actually know what positions I have available,” Kilpatrick said. “Historically we’ve been able to get a lot of great college entry-level graduates from this school. These students are by far the most professional and polished students that I see in recruiting period.”

Visit http://bsc.tamu.edu for more information.

Mays’ Financial Management Association chapter has earned the FMA Platinum Membership Development Award for 2004-2005, in recognition of demonstrated excellence in recruiting more than 200 new student members during the academic year. It’s an award given to less than 7 percent of all FMA chapters worldwide.

This marks the fourth award in the past two years for the outstanding FMA chapter. Chapter advisor Sally Guyton was also honored for the 2004-2005 year as a Superior Faculty Advisor. And in 2003-2004, the chapter garnered both a Gold Membership Development Award and Superior Chapter Award.

Recent accounting PhD graduates Shirley Hunter and Fred Feucht recently received national recognition for their outstanding dissertations. Each was honored at the annual meeting of the American Accounting Association held in San Francisco.

Hunter received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies (AIET) Section of the American Accounting Association. Her dissertation examines the impact of Web-based financial reporting for companies listed in emerging market stock exchanges such as in Africa. Hunter is now an assistant professor of international accounting at Tufts University.

Feucht received the KPMG Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Gender Issues and Worklife Balance (GIWB) Section of the American Accounting Association. Feucht’s dissertation examines the impact of tax policy on the American family. He is an assistant professor of accounting at Prairie View A&M University.

Accounting Professor L. Murphy Smith chaired Hunter’s dissertation committee and co-chaired Feucht’s committee. “Like my faculty colleagues, I am thankful for the opportunity to work with the gifted and highly motivated students who attend Texas A&M,” he says.

In August, Marketing Professor Venkatesh Shankar met with the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, S. Jayakumar, to discuss how to best improve Singapore’s global competitiveness.

The tiny island country off the coast of Malaysia — roughly three times the size of Washington, D.C. — became one of the world’s most prosperous countries through its international trading links after it achieved independence in 1965. Singapore’s success has been led by forward-looking strategies, and its government is turning to scholars such as Shankar to help advise future trade and business efforts.

Shankar will follow up with a full report for Jayakumar, detailing how Singapore should best position itself for the future alongside India and China, its booming and competitive Asian neighbors.

Associate Professor of Information and Operations Management Rogelio Oliva was officially recognized by IBM Research as a thought leader in service sciences, management and engineering. The IBM division has been using Oliva’s research in the management of service supply chains to drive its own internal research.

Oliva is now working with the IBM Research division to formalize a relationship, which could include a research project involving Mays and IBM researchers. To learn more about who else is involved, visithttp://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/ssme/influencers.shtml.

A group of nine Mays undergraduates and MBAs met with Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar at his Houston office in mid-September to share their impressions of summer internships in the Middle East with Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

They shared stories and thanked Lesar for the one-of-a-kind opportunity that made them the first interns ever to work with KBR’s government and logistics team in Kuwait, Dubai and Jordan.

The student interns include: Stephen Arredondo, BBA finance; David Brodniak, MBA finance; Graham Gilkerson, BBA accounting; Joseph N. King, MBA; Audry McAfee, MBA; Brandon McMahon, BBA accounting; Trey Scott, BBA finance; Lloyd Igbokwe, BBA and BS sociology; and Samuel Sipes, MBA finance.

A group of 39 undergraduate engineering students at Texas A&M earned the first-ever business management certification for Aggie engineers during an intensive, three-week program this August at Mays Business Schools’ Center for Executive Development. The business crash course introduced the junior and senior undergraduates from the Look College of Engineering to basic business concepts from costing to managing employees.

The curriculum was crafted from the key elements that engineers in business — from small business owners to engineering managers in major corporations — say they needed once they entered the workforce.

Professors in accounting, finance, information and operations management, management and marketing shared sessions that lasted 8 hours a day from Aug. 8 to Aug. 26. Students worked through business case studies, put themselves to the test with financial and managerial accounting, and used facilities at the state-of-the-art Reliant Energy Trading Center to conduct simulations in finance.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Accounting Excellence Professor Clair Nixon, a frequent Center for Executive Development instructor, conducted extensive research on the business needs of engineers during a summer fellowship with Boeing in 2004. Nixon designed the business management certificate curriculum as part of the first interdisciplinary effort to bring the basics of business to students in another A&M college. He implemented the program alongside center director Ben Welch and program coordinator Pam Curry.

“Most engineers do a very good job technically, but don’t do as well on the business side,” Nixon says. “Engineers have to understand the principles behind running a business.”

The program, which accepted applicants selected by the Look College of Engineering earlier this year, is expected to continue next summer.

The Hispanic Business Student Association welcomed the largest incoming class of Hispanic business freshmen this September with a kick-off reception for the Class of 2009. Just over 100 business students out of this year’s freshman class of 850 are of Hispanic origin. In comparison, 69 Hispanic students were part of the freshman cohort in fall 2004.

Nearly 50 Hispanic freshmen attended the September meet and greet designed to foster a sense of community in the Hispanic Business Student Association and share b-school resources with its members. Association president Rocio Sotelo, a senior finance major, welcomed the students with a hearty “bienvenidos” and “howdy!” “At this moment, we are making history,” she said.

Pointing out business representatives and corporate scholarship sponsors at the networking event, Sotelo added, “Mays gave me a lot of resources, and I want you to know where they are to take advantage of them also.”

Heightened recruiting efforts and a focus on increasing diversity allowed for the largest class of under-represented students at Mays in recent history, thanks largely to the efforts of recruitment coordinator Sonia Garcia and the Undergraduate Programs Office staff under Director Peter Drysdale. In fall 2005, more than 125 Hispanic and African-American freshman, about 16 percent of the class, enrolled for classes at Mays. That’s a drastic improvement in the diversity of Mays entering classes, which ranged from 7 to 11 percent under-represented students over the past five years.

“Welcome to Mays Business School,” Associate Dean Martha “Marty” Loudder said during the student reception, concluding her remarks to the Hispanic freshmen. “We’re so lucky to have you here.”

Mays earned an improved score in the annual Wall Street Journal survey of corporate recruiters of business schools, moving up from No. 31 to No. 28 in 2005’s regional rankings.

The rankings measure how appealing a b-school and its MBA program graduates are to recruiters. Rankings are based partly on recruiters’ perceptions of the schools on key attributes such as students’ leadership potential and communication skills, the quality of faculty and curriculum and the responsiveness of the career-services office.

Harris Interactive conducted the online survey of 3,267 recruiters from December 2004 to March 2005.